07.16.08
Posted in Microsoft, Finance, GNU/Linux, Patents, Patent Covenant, Fraud, Samsung at 3:52 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Fraudulent minds think alike; sign software patent deals
W
e have been through this more than once before [1, 2]. Samsung was caught in the midst of a huge scandal and even its chairman was personally involved. He not only quit the company but he is now going to prison.
The ex-chairman of South Korean firm Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, has been found guilty of tax evasion in Seoul and given a three-year suspended jail term.
[…]
The charges followed a three-month investigation into alleged corruption at South Korea’s biggest conglomerate.
Lee, one of South Korea’s richest men, had headed Samsung for two decades before his resignation from the chairmanship in April.
Remember that Samsung signed a Linux-hostile deal under Kun-hee’s leadership.
A noteworthy thing is the similarity between Samsung’s business practices and those of Microsoft. For instance, information about Microsoft’s tax evasion you’ll find in [1, 2]. Lest we forget other mischiefs, including the recent crusade of corruption, all in the name of lock-in. There are some other questionably-criminal activities here and here. Windows Vista too is still blushing at the courtroom after collusions.
It almost seems as though there is more justice in Korea than in supposedly ‘more civilised’ parts of the world. Had justice prevailed in the west, governments would not handle Microsoft so submissively and cowardly. Then again, enforcement of the law typically boils down to political manipulation (or corruption). █
“Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That’s 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”
–CIO.com
Disclosure: My father traded with and distributed Samsung electronics almost exclusively for 20 years, so there hardly any bias against the company.
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06.22.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Ron Hovsepian, Mono, Patents, Patent Covenant, Samsung at 6:07 am by Roy Schestowitz
Unsurprisingly, the anti-Red Hat deal [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] which Microsoft and Novell had signed did not leave Red Hat too happy. Nevertheless, the new CEO has not said much about Novell. In the following new article he finally explains the difference between Novell’s approach and Red Hat’s approach (as Charles recently did).
Tell me more about the settlement.
What was impactful and important about it was we not only protected ourselves and our customers, we protected all upstream and downstream use of the technology. A lot of times, not to pick on anyone in particular, but Novell in the Microsoft settlement didn’t protect all their upstream and downstream users. We’re not just protecting ourselves, we’re protecting everyone who uses that technology.
Are patent disputes a common problem for you?
It’s always one of the issues, how do you handle patents with open source, because of the necessity in open source to protect up and downstream. It’s a complex set of legal issues. We generally don’t run into it that much because open source is really good at working around patent issues. It doesn’t take up a lot of my time.
Red Hat seems to be tuned in to developers’ needs a lot more than Novell is, the latter being a mixed-source company [1, 2, 3, 4] with a non-Free (non-libre) mindset. As such, this self-serving attitude is only to be expected in the future. Remember:
“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”
–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO (2008)
If the following comparison is anything to go by, Novell is to Free software what Nokia is to open source.
SUSE used to be a solid and stalwart promotor of free and open source software. The commercial boxsets had the best and most extensive collection of manuals and tutorials in the field, showing it understood the need of new W2L migrators. For Novell it was good thinking to buy SUSE and use it to salvage it’s declining Netware business. Corporations are driven by other sentiments than the communities of developers, as the recent remarks of Nokia’s VP show. Corporations will enter into strategic partnerships to protect or expand their market share and thus the partnership between Microsoft and Novell does make sense. But I am also raising my eyebrows at the attempts spearheaded by Novell to port Microsoft-based technology (.Net and Silverlight) to Linux (Mono and Moonlight).
Speaking of Mono, Nokia’s gadgets and Microsoft sellouts, never forget Samsung + Microsoft, which we last mentioned yesterday. Samsung is one of the companies that pay Microsoft for Linux in its gadegsts. It’s better to avoid it. Mono is believed to be part of this deal [1, 2, 3], but there’s insufficient evidence. █
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06.21.08
Posted in Microsoft, Windows, GNU/Linux, Novell, Hardware, Samsung, xandros at 4:57 am by Roy Schestowitz
There are certainly some interesting stories appearing at the moment. In yesterday morning’s news and the British press in particular (e.g. this one, with further commentary here) it was revealed that the desktop product from ASUS — part of the Eee family — will run Windows and not GNU/Linux as initially promised. How come? ASUS says that its Xandros derivative will come later, but why not first? Why the sudden change, what about pricing, and why a distribution that is rendered ‘tainted’ by a software patents deal with Microsoft?
“…Microsoft clearly has a history of getting its top competitors to stop competing.”Going back to Corel days, Microsoft clearly has a history of getting its top competitors to stop competing. Money is typically involved — a transaction for securing a monopoly if you like.
In yesterday’s news, coincidentally enough, practices related to this were described as harmful. And with Corel, Xandros comes to mind again. We are still not sure whether Microsoft gets paid for Linux-based Eee PCs or.
The choice of Xandros and Windows by ASUS gets criticised in this new article (remember the fight against Linux sub-notebooks using crippled hardware and cheap Windows). It’s a good read.
From the same source (Free Software Magazine), here is Seagate getting slammed and even compared to Novell.
It is sad to see a great hardware manufacturer, like Seagate, pandering to the demands of a Convicted Monopolist, like Microsoft, to the extent that they are making life difficult for all their other customers. It seems like Microsoft corrupts everything it touches. The free software community should maintain a complete apartheid from this corporation and with all those who attempt to collaborate with it, like Novell.
Seagate, Novell, Xandros… Microsoft sure gets around. It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft and Seagate got together (there’s this earlier one too). Linux users around the world (across the Web) complained very vocally at the beginning of this year and the end of last year due to Linux exclusion or neglect by Seagate, so this is not news. Hard-drives needn’t be platform dependent; neither should Seagate. They sell hardware.
It goes further. As a side note, surely enough Adobe is once again betraying the Linux Foundation, of which it is a new member. Its newly-announced media player supports Mac OS and Windows but nothing else, so that’s another one to keep in mind.
Last but now least, Samsung has got this new product (described below), but despite the fact that it’s Linux-based, Samsung is definitely to be avoided not just because of the corruption but also because it sold out (Linux developers) to Microsoft.
A style-conscious Samsung digital camera and personal media player (PMP) is built on a MontaVista Linux platform, it was revealed by a reader. Shipping since last year, the Samsung i70 features 7.2-megapixel resolution, 3x optical zoom, and Samsung’s ASR (Advanced Shake Reduction) technology.
It is interesting to see that Samsung uses MontaVista rather than a homebrew Linux platform. Does this mean that MontaVista too could be tainted if put in the hands of companies that signed software patent deals which involve Linux? The ripple effect (or chain reaction) is not a convenience one. Ponder the transitory relationship between ASUS and Microsoft, due to Xandros in the middle. █
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04.26.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, Google, Samsung, xandros, Linspire, Turbolinux at 1:40 am by Roy Schestowitz
The past week has been a pleasant one because there were many positive announcements for GNU/Linux, despite the Intel- and Microsoft-imposed OLPC disaster, which was rather predictable anyway (to those tracking the inhumane and systematic abuses).
Looking at OpenSUSE over the past week, here is what we have. From the company which planned to install Ubuntu, then dropped it for Foresight on KPC, now comes OpenSUSE.
PERSONAL computers with Linux pre-installed have been springing up all over the place in recent months. Now Shuttle, the Taiwanese company famous for making small but perfectly formed PCs, have gotten in on the act. I’ve been spending some time in the company of their LinuXPC SD3002Q, which is sold with openSUSE 10.3 Linux pre-installed.
Moving on to the development builds, here comes the announcement of beta 1 of OpenSUSE. The announcement is about a week old by now, but we post these roundups periodically.
KDE 4 and KDE 3.5: The openSUSE 11.0 beta 1 includes KDE 4.0.3, which includes a number of new features, fixes, and optimizations. See the KDE4 page for more info on the KDE4 branch. To help test, see the wiki for info on reporting bugs in KDE. Not quite ready to move to KDE4? No worries, the beta includes an installation option for KDE 3.5 in addition to KDE4.
There is a very nice new post from Zonker, who discusses ways of giving equal and fair chances to GNOME and the two KDEs (KDE4 might not satisfy everyone’s needs at this early stage).
Of course, it really matters very little what order the desktop choices are ordered in — the majority of users are going to pick the desktop that they’re familiar with, and it won’t matter if that choice is placed first, second, or third. The users who have no idea which desktop is which are probably going to pick the desktop that has the most appealing (for them) description — not the desktop that happens to be placed first.
Screenshots extracted from the latest beta can be found at GNUMAN.COM. Beineri is the one posting a summary of the news this week
In this week’s issue:
* OpenOffice_org 2.4 available
* 11.0 feature by feature: All you ever wanted to know!
[…]
That’s about all from OpenSUSE this week, other than the breakdown of projects sponsored by Google’s Summer of Code (SoC).
Linspire
‘CNR factory’, sometimes known as Debian derivative Ubuntu derivative Linspire, has had another CNR press release published. This time it’s Google Earth, which is free (gratis) and typically very trivial to install.
Linspire, Inc., developer of CNR.com, the free and easy to use one-click digital software delivery service for desktop Linux software, today announced the immediate availability of Google Earth for Freespire 2.0, Linspire 6.0, Ubuntu 7.04 & 7.10 (32 bit) desktop Linux users.
Just like last week, the only ones to pay attention are at DesktopLinux.com (eWeek).
Ubuntu, Linspire, and Freespire users can now install “Google Earth” with a single click, says Linspire. The desktop Linux distributor has added support for the free mapping application to its CNR (”click-n-run”) installer, a user-friendly tool currently beta-testing for a wide variety of desktop Linux distributions.
Nothing from Xandros recently, other than some articles about Asustek’s derivative of Xandros. Turbolinux got mentioned a few times in articles about Novell in China. Samsung has meanwhile posted good results despite the corruptions and the departure of the CEO. █
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04.22.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Patents, Samsung, Linspire at 4:22 pm by Roy Schestowitz
On a couple of occasions over the past few weeks we wrote about the problems Samsung was having [1, 2]. Accusations were made about crime and anything that weakens those who liaise for Microsoft’s “royalty payment” schemes for Linux would be good news. That includes Samsung.
Here is the report from The Register.
Samsung chairman quits in corruption scandal
The disgraced chairman of Samsung quit the firm today in a bid to save its reputation, after he and nine other senior executives were indicted on tax dodging charges.
It seems likely that more CEOs who signed Linux software patent deals with Microsoft will see themselves dismissed. We already saw that happening before when Kevin Carmony left Linspire just months after signing the deal. With new leadership comes new philosophy sometimes. █
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04.18.08
Posted in FSF, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, GPL, Google, Fraud, Samsung, OSI at 6:57 pm by Roy Schestowitz
One of Microsoft’s lesser-known partners, which also signed a software patent deal involving Linux, is Samsung. We wrote about Samsung’s corruption allegations just a fortnight ago and also provided many contextual links for background about this deal.
The New York Times has more information at the moment. It is suggesting that the chairman of the company is personally involved and also charged. This looks bad for this gigantic company as a whole.
The chairman of the Samsung Group, Lee Kun-hee, has been indicted on charges of evading taxes on billions of dollars that he hid in stock accounts under the names of his aides, a special prosecutor announced on Thursday.
The weaker and less credible Microsoft’s partners become, the better it is for freedom of software. The abuse of the GPL must end and the GPLv3 is one possible solution to these deals.
While on the subject of GPLv3, some readers are likely to recall the AGPL-Google kerkuffle [1, 2, 3] because it led to a few discussions in this Web site. As it turns out, Google’s AGPLv3 snub is no accident and there’s more to it.
Chris [DiBona]:
Actually, we think that creating individual pools of software that cannot be shared amongst other licenses is less open, which is why we are against license proliferation.
SoC isn’t much about recruiting, but more about creating more open source code and developers.
mtg [Milking The Gnu]:
So the argument is that of compatibility? (e.g. creating less ‘pools’) but then by the same token you could have only the X/MIT license …
It raises another issue though: does it mean Google doesn’t really trust the OSI?
What if OSI starts delivering say an “Open Choice Repository” label to those repositories offering all OSI-approved licenses; does Google code want to end-up next to Microsoft CodePlex which denies hosting to GPLv3 projects?
Bear in mind that Chris DiBona used to be a very active participant in the OSI. We corresponded on several occasions. In this blog post (correspondence), DiBona says that he likes beer and wine. Well, it’s time to sober up.
The AGPLv3 is a reality and it’s extremely important to defend it. If Google disregards even the OSI’s approval (never mind the FSF’s principles), then Google will further complicate status issues amongst some developers. Time to face reality, Google. Your shareholders need the faith of the geeks. █
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04.06.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Asia, Fraud, Kernel, Samsung at 2:10 am by Roy Schestowitz
“Great [criminal] minds think alike”
Microsoft’s business crimes is a topic we have been through before (some updates here), so we needn’t run down though examples again. Today’s topic, however, is the big fiasco that revolves around Samsung, which we consider a no-go area ever since it decided to pay Microsoft for Linux, or rather, for baseless accusations and unsubstantiated claims. In that sense, Samsung did Microsoft a great FUD favour/lip service and to Linux developers it was a disservice.
Those two companies, Microsoft and Samsung are closer than most people realise. Among the projects they collaborated on recently: Origami, RAM chips (Vista), USB solutions for Windows and much more.
Today’s news comes from MSBBC.
Prosecutors question Samsung boss
The boss of South Korea’s Samsung Group has appeared before special prosecutors to be questioned over allegations of corruption at the firm.
Lee Kun-hee, chairman of the company, the country’s largest conglomerate, is being questioned in regard to an investigation that started in January.
[…]
With a global workforce of 754,000, it enjoys annual profits of more than $14bn.
For background on this case, see this article from The Inquirer.
Samsung bribery scandal embroils politicians
SAMSUNG IS bracing itself for an investigation into allegations of bribery and corruption that go to the heart of the Korean government.
[…]
According to AFP, Kim says he saw a bribery list kept in a secret vault in Samsung’s headquarters.
It is a very large company at the moment and it will be interesting to find out just how much misconduct was involved and — more importantly — where. █
Related posts:
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03.26.08
Posted in Microsoft, DRM, Novell, Patents, Standard, Interoperability, Protocol, Samsung at 4:37 am by Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft’s way or the highway
We recently saw Microsoft redefining “cross-platform”, among many other terms. Groklaw just has dug up this old document [PDF] which shows how Microsoft views and defines standards and interoperability. The document dates back to the patent deal with Samsung.
Q: What role do standards play in achieving interoperability?
A: While standards frequently play a role in either creating or enhancing interoperability, they are not the only way to deliver interoperability in the marketplace. Three other key ways include: designing products to offer technical interoperability out of the box with software and hardware from other vendors; directly collaborating with partners to deliver more integrated and interoperable solutions for customers; and sharing technology and related intellectual property to encourage interoperability and enable the creation of translation tools across systems.
[…]
Q: How can standardization be balanced with innovation?
A: While standards are frequently a robust and practical solution for solving interoperability, standardization should be treated as just one of several ways to build interoperability between products. In fact, solely relying upon standards can limit innovation by restricting further development in a given market segment or technology area.
[…]
Q: What are the benefits of market-driven standards and the drawbacks of government-imposed procurement preferences?
A: Voluntary, market-driven standards facilitate market access and growth that promotes global competition and innovation in these dynamic and emerging areas. Market-driven standards often result when people or organizations have the flexibility to collaborate voluntarily on the development and implementation of that standard. However, standards can also be used to impede market access, with governments imposing procurement-based preferences or outright regulations and effectively raising barriers to purchasing and free trade.
Watch the con-standards fragments of the text. This should not surprise you at all. Microsoft is keen on coining terms like “market-driven standards”, which is probably just a positive connotation added to de facto standards, passing liability and responsibility from lock-in-loving vendors to the “market” (think pro-consumer). It’s a PR-targeted illusion. It’s akin to describing DRM as a case of “Rights” or “Enablement” instead of “Restriction” and “Disablement”, which is exactly what DRM achieves (the latter of course). No wonder there is poor interest in Microsoft’s new interoperability forum. [mind our emphasis in red]
When Microsoft laid out its broad commitment to more openness last month, one of the concrete steps it said it would take was the opening of the Interoperability Forum to allow customers around the world to have an open dialogue on how Microsoft products could work better with those of other vendors. That forum is now online, albeit empty and unannounced.
Unsurprisingly, Novell found the same lack of interest in Microsoft’s “interoperability”. Indifference is all they seem to get. █
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« Previous entries ·
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.